Stranger in Paradise

“Is she a pain?” Daisy said.

“You bet,” Jesse said.

“Might she run off anyway?”

“Absolutely,” Jesse said.

“And you think the town will feel much better about her living with two lesbians than they would about her living with you?”

“I think so,” Jesse said. “More important, though, I think it would be better for her.”

“Because a fourteen-year-old girl living alone with an unrelated man will tie herself into some kind of Oedipal knot?” Daisy said.

“You’re pretty smart for a queer cook,” Jesse said.

“I used to see a shrink,” Daisy said. “When I was trying to figure out if I should be a lesbian.”

“Well, it must have worked,” Jesse said.

“I don’t seem ambivalent about it,” Daisy said, “do I.”

“I don’t know if this will happen,” Jesse said. “It won’t happen until I am sure her father will not present a problem for anybody.”

“This is a just-in-case,” Daisy said.

Jesse nodded.

“You want to discuss it with Angela?”

“No,” Daisy said. “I’ll do it.”

“Like that?”

“I’m not from here, Jesse, and neither are you,” Daisy said. “Neither one of us exactly belongs. And probably neither one of us ever will.”

Jesse shrugged.

“And I didn’t improve my chance for membership by marrying Angela Carlson,” Daisy said. “Of the Paradise Carlsons.”

“I think most people don’t give much of a damn one way or the other,” Jesse said. “Unless they’re running for office and their opponent is winning.”

Now Daisy shrugged.

“Maybe,” she said. “You may recall, I got some nasty feedback when I got married. But you’ve had problems of your own, and you do a tough job well, and ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been a decent and welcoming friend. I love it that you called me a queer cook.”

Jesse grinned.

“Can I take that as a yes?” Jesse said.

“You may,” Daisy said. “And to prove it I’ll give you the secret lesbian sign.”

She put her arms around Jesse and kissed him. Jesse hugged her for a moment and stepped back.

“You know,” he said, “we heteros have a similar sign.”

65.

Crow drove the length of the causeway and clocked the distance, and on the way back stopped to check the water level at low tide. There was a wide strip of sand and rocks on the ocean side, but still no footing on the harbor side. Okay. He’d be leaning on the ocean-side seawall. At the mainland end of the causeway, he pulled into the town parking lot by Paradise Beach and parked and flipped open his cell phone. He punched in a number and waited.

“It’s Crow,” he said when a voice answered. “Got a message for Francisco.”

Crow waited a moment, then spoke again.

“You call him what you want, and I’ll call him what I want. Tell him I got his daughter, and I’ve changed my mind. He can have her if the price is right.”

He listened to the phone again as he watched a young woman take her beach robe off near the edge of the water.

“He knows the cell phone number,” Crow said. “Tell him to give me a ringy-dingy.”

The young woman’s bathing suit was white, and barely sufficient to its task, though it contrasted nicely with her tan skin. She looked to be about twenty-five.

“Sure thing,” Crow said, and closed the phone.

Crow wasn’t choosy about age, though at twenty-five most women didn’t seem very interesting. Older women had more to talk about. But younger women usually had firmer thighs.

“It’s all good,” Crow said aloud.

Most of the people on the beach were women and children. The women generally the mothers of the children, or the nannies. Most of them were a little softer-looking than Crow liked, a little too thick in the thighs, a little too wide in the butt.

Probably not a lot of time to work out when you got kids.

Not that Crow would have turned them away. Crow liked to be with women. And the women didn’t need to be perfect. He liked to look at women. He thought about them sexually. Just as he liked to be with them sexually. But he thought about them in many other ways as well. He liked the way they moved, the way they were always aware of their hair. He liked the way they were with the children. He liked the thought they gave to their clothes, even at the beach. He liked how most of them found a way to keep a towel or something around their waists when they were in bathing suits. In health clubs, he noticed they did the same thing in workout tights. It always amused him. They wore revealing clothes for a reason, and covered the clothes with towels for a reason. Crow had never been able to figure out the reasons.

Ambivalence?

He’d asked sometimes but had never gotten an answer that made sense to him. He didn’t mind. Part of what he liked in women was the uncertainty that they created. There was always a sense of puzzlement, of tension. Tension was much better than boredom.

Crow’s phone rang. He smiled and nodded his head.

“Bingo,” he said.

66.

“I need to run this by you,” Jesse said.

Dix nodded.

“I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing,” Jesse said.

“And you think I’ll know?” Dix said.

“I think you’ll have an informed opinion,” Jesse said. “I will value it.”

Dix tilted his head very slightly, as if he was almost acknowledging a compliment.